Defiant Unto Death by David Gilman

years ago, when he was still a boy, Guillaume had survived the plague and ridden thirteen days in search of Blackstone, who had once spared his life. His own lord, Henri Livay, lay dead from the hideous black swellings inflicted by the Great Pestilence. The boy’s will to survive brought him to the man who granted him the honour of being his squire and taught him to fight. He inherited Livay’s fine sword, and learnt how to use it well, but as young as he was and as skilled as he had become, he had never witnessed such relentless fury in a fighter as that in his sworn lord, Sir Thomas Blackstone, a knight whom the Norman lords declared to be the most ferocious they had ever seen. And yet that fury, which men revered in a war leader, was never witnessed by family or friend.
    The story of how Blackstone came by the sword, with its maker’s mark of the running wolf, had been known for years and Guillaume never tired of the telling. The great swordsmiths of Passau in Germany had learnt their skills from the Saracens following the crusades. And Wolf Sword had been a gift from a German count to his son, who campaigned with the King of Bohemia, an ally of the French. It had been the German’s misfortune to have slain Thomas Blackstone’s brother on the field at Crécy. It was there, Guillaume thought, that his master’s demons had been unleashed. For, as the German knight came within striking distance of the young Prince of Wales, the English archer took the fight to him and killed him despite being badly wounded himself. No devil or god could have expected muscle and sinew to do what Blackstone did. And every time Guillaume burnished his lord’s armour, he would recite the legend to Blackstone’s son, Henry, who had yet to learn the ways of fighting men. He was still like a child who played with younger children, a source of contention that Guillaume was aware of, but it was not his place to pass comment or to encourage the boy beyond telling him stories and pleasing Lady Christiana by playing with the children when time from his duties permitted.
    He suspected that Blackstone shared her gratitude, but it was a matter that was never discussed between them when they campaigned together. And now that there would be no fighting for the rest of this year, Guillaume would spend more time with the boy and help him with his Latin studies. He knew, though, that Sir Thomas would never cease their training schedule and that when the weight of his domestic life bore down they would ride out to the other walled towns so that Blackstone could be with his men and ensure their readiness to fight. And to absent himself from the women who would visit Lady Christiana and share his hearth. And gossip.
    Blackstone’s manor was not large: a cluster of buildings in the yard housed stables and a few servants; its kitchen stood close to the great hall. Although each room had a fireplace all the socializing was done where the fire burned the brightest, in the great hall, its chestnut bressummer mantel spanning four cloth yards. Blackstone was gracious enough to spend time with these infrequent visitors, grateful that they showed sufficient concern to be with Christiana while he was away campaigning, but he did not have the luxury of those Norman barons who had sufficient income from their lands. The tithe that Blackstone took from his villagers was sufficient to keep the house warm and food on the table for the handful of hobelars who lived with their women and guarded the manor’s boundary. Each town under Blackstone’s control took a similar patis , offering protection for the peasants in return for the feeding of his soldiers and a percentage of any goods sold in local markets. But payment for these men had to be in plunder and that was why he undertook the campaigns that he did, reaching ever further from the safety of his home to take on those loyal to King John and stripping them of coin, plate and